Prairie Class and Easter Eggs

The weekend was so busy that we colored our Easter Eggs the day after Easter. Patrick, who is almost 13, bailed on the project. Sniff. Babies growing up-God I hate that. He didn't do the Easter Egg Hunt at my sister in law's house either.

Tae and Morgan had a good time coloring the eggs though.

My happy kid.

Color blending.

Pretty eggs.

Today was the kids first day of Prairie Class. One of our homeschooling moms taught the class at the Warwick Library. She did an awesome job.

They discussed geography and life on the prairie.

Each of the kids received a folder and a new prairie name. Tae was named Daniel and Morgan can't remember her name.

The kids got some really awesome handouts and talked about how folks on the Prairie would live. There was discussion about the Oregon Trail and the

Early Pioneers and Transcontinental Railroad.

These aren't brownies, they are salt dough bricks.

The kids used these to make their sod house replicas.

Paying close attention to figure out the pattern.

Sod Brick house construction.

Finding just the right pattern to make it work.

How many bricks do I need?

The roof goes on.

Ta-da!

Perhaps it's a lean-to.

The kids also learned what chores were like for Prairie kids. Kids were responsible for twisting the grass into tight ropes. These would have been used to burn in the fireplace since no wood was available and winters were very cold. The kids took home patterns to make bonnets, church dolls, and tin can musical instruments.

They also got a pie tin to make a decorative prairie design on.

Then came the butter making. Each child had heavy cream and shook and shook the container until the butter formed.

Delicious butter. We'll take this home and add a little salt.

Morgan tried some yummy biscuits with homemade butter and a little smucker's jelly to sweeten it just a bit.

Tae went back for seconds. He wanted to know who had the job of shaking all the butter at the grocery store because "his arms must get awfully tired making all that butter."

One more class next week. Can't wait to see what Tina has in store.

Spring Savings Checkup

No pictures today. I forgot to charge the battery in the camera. I thought I would do a check in and show you my savings so far this year. I also went to Stop and Shop on Saturday and thought I did lousy since my bill was $131.22. But I found I did really well once I checked my register receipt. I have to remember that this was a holiday week and they always cost a little more.

Stop and Shop had tons of BOGO's this week. These are great weeks to stock up on the items you use a lot of. This week Pepperridge farm bread was BOGO. Normally priced at $3.99 that is a huge savings there. BUT I had a save $0.75 coupon which was doubled ($1.50). That's a total savings of $5.49.

The other items that were BOGO were Thomas English muffins (combined with a $1/1) coupon, Breyers Icecream (combined with a $1/2 coupon), Hillshire farms turkey kielbasa (combined with a $1/1 coupon), Lays potato chips, Lipton rice dinners were on sale for $1.00 each. I had two coupons to save $1/3 so I ended up getting 6 boxes (2 free). Ball park franks were BOGO and I had save $1/2.

My big huge savings was on Land O Lakes butter. We go thru a lot of butter but I'm very well stocked now since I've been hitting so many great deals.

Stop and shop had 1 pound butter on sale for $1.99 (normally $3.49). I had 3 coupons for save $0.55/1 pound. Stop and shop doubled these which came to $1.10 savings. I paid $0.89 for each pound of butter. Not too bad!

So here's my savings so far this year. Remember we stocked up at the beginning of the year so spent a little more. And this doesn't include our milk since we have that delivered. And we didn't start this until February First so we have about 10 weeks under our belt. But that still only averages out about $94 a week-still under my $100 a week budget. And all of that included stocking up that pantry.

Coupon savings and in store savings YTD=$861.92

Total spending =$937.22

That's pretty darn remarkable!

Roadkill Bunnies

This was the adorable bunny from our Great Harvest Bread Company Field trip. Isn't it cute? The plump little body and cherubic head. Perfectly shaped bunny ears, little bunny eyes. Yesterday, I put on my wondermom cape and decided that, "HA-I can make those. Who wants to pay $6.50 for a bunny bread." My kids were enthused, and we began our yeasty sculpting.

Ahhhh. See. Children crafting food products that will look just perfect on my Sister-in law's Easter Table.
Let's examine these creations from the netherlands a bit closer. OKAY-so the first two aren't looking so bad. You can tell they are errrmm Bunnies....or roadkill. Either one. Which ever works for you. Bunny number 3 seems to be missing some limbs and it appears as if the he's pooped out some rabbit pellets. Oh wait-that's his nose.

Here are the little critters meeting their fate as I watch thru the oven door.

AHHH-delightful. Dumbo bunny is taking nap. Poor thing-his ears slid right off his head so fast it made him crossed eyed. And he grew a wart on his forehead.

Now Unicorn Bunny isn't looking that bad. Except he probably is the NEMO of the bunny world with his ears all askew. Hmmm-I feel a children's story coming on. Perfect title-Unicorn Bunny.

Then there is this lovely creation. Poor, poor Hydrocephalic Bunny. His brain has swelled so much that it's pushed his ears onto his back. And his poor widdle head is so heavy that his docked tail of a nose has protruded beyond recognition. And the poor big brained bunny obviously cannot see with those squished eyes. And what is that ominous blob of roundness at the bunny's behind. Ooooooh see-that's the bagel bread Morgan made. What? Can't see the hole in the middle? Well it swelled in the oven and came out looking like an "inny" belly button.

See? Very creative kids. I may have to buy some shellac and preserve these memories.

In the meantime, I'll be sure to order my Honey Bunny Bread next year from Great Harvest.

Happy Easter!

Planting Daffodils

I was going through my seed stash and realized I had some Daffodil bulbs from last year. They came free with an order of plants. The package of 6 bulbs was pretty pathetic looking. Two of the bulbs were dry and crumbly and couldn't be saved. These four had some green sprouts on them and since my potting soil was already sitting on my counter, I decided to plant them to see if they could be resurrected.

This used to be one of my favorite pots. I've had it for many

years and it used to have a lid...and a handle and I think it was a bean pot in it's former life.

Now it has a big crack down the side.

But I can't bear to get rid of this stone pot. It has the cute cows on the

front and is so heavy and very inviting and makes me smile. So I got out my superglue and

patched up the crack and threw in a plastic tupperware container so it

wouldn't leak everywhere. Maybe it will bless me with some beautiful indoor blooms.

Great Harvest Bread Company Field Trip

Our homeschool co-op had a field trip today to the Great Harvest Bread Company.

www.greatharvest.com

Look at all the yummy breads they had listed. And no I didn't have a coupon for any of them.

This was Ray, our tour guide. Love his shirt. It says, "Prepare to Meet Your Baker."

If I had a big jar like this I would fill it with Biscotti too! Maybe chocolate chip cookies instead.

Or how about some yummy muffins?

The kids each got to make their own mini loaf of bread while the mom's shopped out front. I bought some yummy granola, some cinnamon chip pancake mix (and got a really cool spatula for free with the mix) and I bought some mediterranean olive loaf that we ate with our Shepherd's Pie tonight. And I bought a totally delicious iced coffee that really made my afternoon.

Tae had a great time rolling out the honey wheat dough.

The twins gave it a good workout too.

Shane needed a little nap today.

Morgan preferred to make bread doughnuts.

This was their milling machine. Every day they grind their wheat and all of their ingredients fresh. I didn't realize when I left this room that I leaned against the wall and had a lovely coating of white on my coat.

They even grind their own pumpkin seeds to make pumpkin bread. Or are these sunflower seeds? Hard to tell.

Ray put the kid's bread into the oven. We learned that the oven can make 180 loaves of bread at one time. The whole place smelled just delightful.

The kids loaves came out of the oven and they were able to take them home in a goodie bag. In each of the bags was a packet of wheat grass seeds to grow at home.

Little ones just love gift bags. Even if it does contain wheat grass seeds.

Gideon sculpted this outstanding Ginger bread boy (out of whole wheat bread).

Can we have a cookie please Mommy?

Happy Easter Everyone!

Recreating Finances

Walmart finally restocked it's Rimmel Sexy Curves mascara. I had two free coupons from the All You magazine. Each mascara was priced at $6.47. The cashier gave me a bit of hard time. He said they only allowed one coupon per customer. I pointed out that the coupon said one coupon per purchase not one coupon per customer. He blinked blindly like he had no idea and put the second coupon through. That's $12.94 in savings! If you don't subscribe to All You magazine I would highly recommend it. It is really the only magazine that is loaded with good coupons.

Morgan has been studying consumer math for homeschool. Last Sunday when I went grocery shopping, she came with me. I put her in charge of the calculator. She helped me figure out the savings with coupons, price per unit and what our final cost would be. We were off by one dollar in our favor when it came time to check out. She was pretty excited. She's the only 9 year old I know that can balance a checkbook.

I think I've made a monster out of her with the coupons though.

So, back to finances. It's been very liberating to have control over our spending. I set a strict budget for groceries of just $100 a week. This is half of what I was spending last year so it has been a huge feat to accomplish this. For the past three weeks I've been feeding my family of 5 on about $70 a week. Since we budgeted the $100 a week, I rollover this money so that we can use it for holiday weeks, parties or get togethers that might cost us extra.

I am averaging about $40 a week in coupon savings and another $30-$40 in store savings. Each week, because of coupons and in store sales I am getting 3-4 items free. Creating a stockpile and having a pantry inventory always updated has helped me a lot to only buy what I need. I don't do a formal meal planning but have a general idea of what I want to cook for that week. This week I knew it was lasagna and shepherd's pie. So on Sunday I bought hamburg and extra potatoes (BOGO at Shaws). Kraft shredded cheese was on sale (further reduced by coupons) and I already had tons of lasagna noodles in the pantry.

I am also trying to plan meals that we can get more than one meal out of like the lasagna and Shepherd's Pie. The kids will eat these for days for lunch. Crock-pot meals also work great.

I've cut out a lot of prepackaged junk food too. Now we bake brownies or cookies for a fraction of the price of prepackaged junk. I feel alot better knowing what ingredients are going into my food too. Eggs-fresh from our chicken, cane sugar. It's all good.

Another huge savings is not buying sandwich meat. Deli's will charge about $6.99-$9.99 a pound. In January we bought a meat slicer and buy a huge ham or turkey from the Deli at BJ's. Did you know they will sell it to you for $3.35 a pound because it's unsliced and in bulk? Our last ham was about 30 pounds. That's at least half off the price they charge for preparing for you. We only slice what we need and freeze the rest. In past years, the kids would get sick of the sandwich meat and it would go to waste. Now if they don't want it we just don't slice for that week. Cheese is way cheaper in bulk too. So for an $88.00 investment, we've already saved a ton of money. And no more funky smelling turkey left in the meat drawer.

One of our homeschooling families also raises meat chickens and we have placed an order with her. I hate buying chicken from the store ever since watching some youtube

videos on chicken processing.

http://www.chickenindustry.com/

These are vivid, disheartening videos and not for children to watch but I put it out there because I think it's really important to know where your food comes from.

Our family will never be vegetarians but we can make appropriate choices on buying chicken that is not injected with hormones, antibiotics or that is processed in unsanitary conditions.

If my garden does as well as I hope it does, our grocery bill should be cut even further this summer. I'm trying potatoes and onions this year along with squash and those will keep well over the winter. I'll be canning and freezing a lot of stuff this summer too and that will help as well. We'll go apple picking again this summer because our two new apple trees probably won't produce much fruit for a few years to come.

Making my own cleaners, not buying paper goods, making laundry detergent and just taking inventory of what we really need vs. what we want, has made a huge difference. Yet, none of us feel like we are doing without anything. In fact, it's just the opposite-we have become very rich in spirit and bringing our family closer together because it is a family effort.

In all, we've put ourselves on a very strict budget in all areas. We are making some sacrifices in the way of vacations for a few years and we don't eat out anymore except an occasional pizza on Friday night when I go into work. If we continue on this path, we will be debt free (except our mortgage) by 2011. That means no credit card debt, no car loans, no equity loans. We don't have any more money coming in, in fact- a little less since my hours at work were cut. We are just taking charge of everything. It's something we should have done years ago and it's something we will continue to do even if the economy turns around.

If You Give a Boy a Hammer

We had beautiful weather yesterday. It was almost 68 degrees here and I was dying to get out in my garden. I decided to put raised beds in this year instead of rows. The rows took up a lot of space last year so I'm hoping the raised beds will be work better. Larry was busy sawing the wood to surround the beds and Tae decided he needed to build too. Four pieces of wood and a hammer and he worked for about 2 hours building his "picture frame". I think our chickens approve.

Tae tried to find a spot in a bit of shade. Not sure the Adirondack chair

was providing that but he looks happy.

My smiley man.

Too cute.

But the boards were very thick and Tae had a difficult time hammering through them. No worries-he just bossed (I mean requested) help from the girls. When they were finished, the picture frame disappeared into the tree fort. I think it's framing the bark on the tree.
Dear husband and I worked all afternoon on our garden plots. Since the soil was amended so well with cow and chicken manure, we are hoping for a great crop this year. Larry said these look more like burial plots than garden plots. Our property was all old farm country at one time so I'm sure something is buried there!
The beds edged out very nicely and I can't wait to get started planting. This year I made a layout of my garden and really planned it. It should help us know what plants we need to buy. Last year I didn't plan well and the garden was very haphazard-not to mention I ended up sick with Lyme disease and couldn't take care of it. Better gardens ahead.
Our yellow Lab, Stewie, played outside all day. This dog lives for soccer balls. He ran for about 4 hours straight and then collapsed in exhaustion. Oh-but not until he had a bath because dear husband also started to clean the pond filter (which always smells like raw sewage after the long winter) and of course, Stewie had to run through it. Why do dogs think rolling in stinky things is a good idea. I really, really hate the annual pond cleaning.
The chickens were also enjoying the nice weather.

Nothing like a dust bath to make you feel good.

The black and white Wyandottes look like it's one chicken with two heads and Chipmunk our Easter Egger has his head up the other chickens butt. Chickens really aren't that smart. The girls thought it was a great time. I'm not so sure our Rooster did though. The girls kept kicking up dust and dirt at him and he was black instead of white by the time they got done with him.

Shaw's Stinks

I never shop at Shaw's but decided to try it because of the Duckling rewards. Ton's of free stuff, kids cough medicine, aveeno lotion etc. So I pick everything out and get to the register and there is a sign saying that Shaw's is no longer accepting internet coupons for the duckling rewards. Did Corporate just realize that it was about $80 in free stuff? Had I read Bargain Becky's post I would have realized this before I went shopping.

I made the cashier unscan everything from the free coupons. She wasn't happy....neither was I.
More on my savings later.
I'm too angry to blog.

Fairy Houses-sort of

We had some birdhouses in our garden that didn't make it through the winter. The kids painted them last year but with the heavy winds and rains they were pretty broken apart. When I was cleaning the garden yesterday, Tae thought these would make perfect Fairy houses.

He made a gate leading to the church...I mean fairy house and used some old broken roof shingles off of another fairy house, for the bridge. The big sunflower stone was their "patio."

I guess even Fairies go to church sometimes.